Thompson's reflections on black artists revealing

By Roberto Bonazzi, For the Express-News

Updated
5:50 pm CST, Thursday, February 13, 2014

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SAN ANTONIO — Clifford Thompson's eclectic collection of personal reflections and commentaries on books, music, film and art reveals clarifying perceptions about American culture in a compelling voice of enthusiasm, honesty, humility and balance.

Thompson's essay “A Confession About Jazz” begins: “Years ago, as a young(er) man, I struggled to define my identity as both black and American. In the end I turned to jazz, whose sound I loved, as a symbol of black Americans' inventiveness and as a basis for a sense of cultural identity. That decision both helped me to relax and launched a music-buying addiction that hasn't gone away.” He accomplishes this “identity” most effectively in serious yet casual commentaries about listening to jazz. By evoking characterizations of jazz artists and allusions to their voices, we hear a mimetic translation into the language of feeling. His rare gift for making connections between seemingly dissimilar ideas resembles the action of metaphor.

After discussing the great jazz trumpeters — Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge — he turns to Miles Davis, who “was the exception to the trumpet rule,” because he “accomplished in spite of that” (his inability to match Gillespie's “agility or range on the trumpet”) “the complete channeling of himself into the instrument,” and “his playing was beautifully, heartbreakingly mournful, to the point where he sometimes seemed to be weeping through his horn.”

Thompson's complex title piece does the same in words. “Love for Sale” is a touching essay about his mother's dying, seamlessly integrated within intimate and artistic realms. It leaps from her joking with him “on her deathbed,” and singing some favorite tunes, to evoking a Miles Davis version of “Love for Sale.”

“Like a host, Miles — on muted trumpet — introduces the song's theme at the beginning and plays it again at the end, taking subtle, supple liberties with the bent-note wistfulness of the melody ... Between those passages come solos by alto-sax luminary Cannonball Adderly, who had not only the sweetest sound in jazz but one of the fastest, and the tenor-sax god John Coltrane, whose signature wails are all that separate his bursts of breakneck virtuosity.”

Thompson's penetrating evaluations of the works of black artists are necessary — not only fresh takes on icons Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, but illuminating assessments of younger writers Colson Whitehead, Paul Beatty and Zadie Smith. For most of us, his essay on Rudolph Fisher, forgotten author of the Harlem Renaissance, will be a true discovery. He is equally astute in views of American cinema, from being critical of black exploitation movies to appreciating the way John Sayles depicts black characters in his films.

Clifford Thompson has been an editor at various New York publishing houses for over two decades. He won a 2013 Whiting Foundation Award, and his acclaimed first novel, “Signifying Nothing,” appeared in 2009. Thompson's engaging dispatches that so often evolve into brilliant essays can be read on his tellcliff.com website.

Roberto Bonazzi is a San Antonio writer. Reach him at latitudesinternational@gmail. com.